Don't Forget your Briefs

A creative brief is essential. No matter if you’re doing a project in a day, or over several years, this document identifies the key points for a film or video.

Whether you’re working directly with a production company, through an agency, or have your own team in-house, you need to know the story, the tone, and the visuals of what you’re creating and so does everyone involved.

While I’m sure they vary company to company, we have some basic starters for you, they help define everyone’s roles, timelines, budget, and much more.

Now, because we’re a film and video production agency our Creative Brief is a little different, so we use our New Project Form (linked at the bottom) to gather all the information from a traditional creative brief, plus the production details we need. However, this is what we think you should have ready for every creative, internal or external.

Key Information

1) Project Details:Give your creative team an honest look at what you want to create. What is the objective? Do you have a length in mind? Is it for TV, social media, website? What are your timelines? What is your budget?

2) What is the core message/goal?As with any creative or marketing project, you want one message to be very clear in your film project. Especially because film and video projects tend to have a longer timeline, you want to make sure that you have a clear goal and that goal can be measured through your campaign.

3) Who is your Target Audience?Are they current customers? A new market? Have they ever heard of your brand before? Knowing who you’re talking to will help craft a script and message that can inform, educate, or persuade the right people to action.

4) What do you want them to think/do after watching?Is there a call to action? Is something telling people to do something specific? Things like “Do This!”, “Watch that!”, “Go there”. Or is this an awareness piece that you want to move people, and get them to share.

5) How do you want them to feel after watching?This is the tone and manner that the piece is created. It informs the music, pacing, movement, and really everything in how your project is created. Knowing the answers above can also help inform your tone.

Final Thoughts:

Our briefs are quite detailed, laying our all the information from the target audience and message, all the way through to a script, shot list, soundtrack examples, and the overall look. We'll work with you to discover everything we need to create your project, but in general, you should be laying this groundwork every time you're talking to your audience.

We have a New Project Form that you can download here. It asks a lot more questions that we include in our brief, but it also helps us understand the scope of what you want to create.